The Obama Address: The Reviews Are In

A wrap-up of what some in the blogosphere and the mainstream media had to say about President Obama's speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. Add your own take in the comments section below.

Felix Salmon, Portfolio.com

So the plan for America's banks is as vague as ever, unfortunately, and nationalization, despite its seeming inevitability, remains the Word That No Politician Dare Utter. The only hint of it comes in the bit about "holding accountable those responsible" -- something which implies that the government is in control of the banks. But what that means in practice, I reckon, has yet to be decided.

Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

As he gathered momentum, the emotional impact increased. The bottom line: "We are not quitters." It was perfectly pitched: a form a liberal patriotism that eschews the kind of politics the American people are sick of. A tour de force. But look: the politics and rhetoric are superb, but all that matters is whether he can pull this off. The results are all that matter now. He has this moment; it could make him and the rest of us. It could destroy him or us. It's our job in this crisis to support him and to criticize him constructively. We need to rise to the occasion he is rising to. And maybe most of us will.

A theme that permeated the speech was rapidly rising national debt, following the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus that Mr Obama just signed. "Everyone in this chamber-Democrats and Republicans-will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me," Mr Obama said. But he has yet to say what he is prepared to sacrifice. He still plans to expand publicly financed health care, make permanent tax credits to the majority of workers, expand college assistance and invest in alternative energy.

Steve Clemons, TalkingPointsMemo

I think he failed to really frame what a new social contract between government, the nation's firms, capital, workers, families and other stakeholders in our society might look like. He got pieces of it right -- and did zero in on his three big priorities: energy, education and health care. But as with so much of what Obama's team has been doing, details were light, enthusiasm and hope were high, reaching out to all sides is part of the new shtick, and lots was left on the editing room floor.

Michael G. Franc, National Review

We heard from a president with a moral compass every bit as sophisticated and powerful as Bill Bennett's, and who possesses a remarkably subtle understanding of the American psyche, but who knows only one way to fit all that wisdom into his current job description--use it to justify seemingly endless calls for more and more government ... In every instance, new government programs are the answer. And therein is the fundamental challenge Obama faces. The American exceptionalism he invoked generates precisely those character traits--personal responsibility, hard work, sacrifice, entrepreneurial creativity, resiliency, decency, and fairness--that will enable ordinary Americans to resist and, ultimately, defeat the suffocating Big Government that Obama seeks to impose on us. But if our friends on the Left ever succeed in suffocating that exceptionalism and extinguishing those character traits, they will ultimately prevail.

New York Times editorial

Mr. Obama rightly said that the country's economic problems did not "begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank." He said the nation has long known that it needs to break its dependence on oil, reform health care and fix its schools. ... One disappointment in Mr. Obama's speech was his failure to deliver any more clarity on his plan to rescue the nation's banking system. He said he would not provide bailouts "with no strings attached." But he offered even less specificity than the administration has in recent weeks. The choices are indisputably difficult, and Mr. Obama may be trying to keep his options open. His team has seemed skittish about the increasingly obvious need for some form of government takeover of some of the biggest banks. If Mr. Obama has a better plan, the nation needs to hear it soon.

Rich Lowery, New York Post

He also talked of responsibility and clean government, while making what was close to a "read my lips" pledge for no taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year and talking of $2 trillion of cuts in government waste. Obama thus portrays himself as something of a fiscal conservative despite his promises of massive new government programs. It probably sounded good to most Americans, who desperately want Obama to succeed. Whether it's as plausible or credible when Obama comes back to speak to a joint session of Congress next year is the $1 trillion question.

Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Wall Street Journal

Mr. Obama came to office without a conspicuous vision other than "bipartisanship" and a belief in the beneficent influence on America and the world of seeing a black man exercising the powers of the presidency. He wields his party's shibboleths like one who sees them mainly as levers for delivering the goods. His ideas about the exercise of politics, in fact, may be accurately reflected in the recent stimulus bill -- in office you supply the wish lists of those who put you there.